google analytics with wordpress

Measuring traffic in such a low-traffic site as this one is probably vanity taken to an extreme, but I have tried it anyways – at least partly to understand how the various web measurements systems work. Google Analytics is a free, very comprehensive system that offers much more information than all those log analyser programs I have been trying out before. But since when I switched this blog to WordPress some time ago, I noticed a significant drop in the site visitor statistics that Google Analytics was reporting. It was only then when I realised that the Google system relies on a javascript embedded in all monitored pages, and WordPress is all database and PHP. It was not showing on the radar. Luckily, it appears that several people have figured out how to make Google Analytics work through a plugin in WordPress. I have now downloaded and activated this one from Johann Richard – lets see how it works out (and if there are actually anyone reading these notes, anyways).

Edit: I don’t think that the first plugin was working (even me cannot have zero visitors, in these days of crowded information superhighways) — I am now trying another Google Analytics plugin, this time from Boakes.org; see: http://boakes.org/analytics

Edit2: The Boakes version was working, but I ended also upgrading to the WordPress Reports plugin by Joe Tan, which generates admin reports based on Google Analytics and Feedburner data. In any case, the number of visitors in this blog is down -92% according to these reports, as compared to the Blogger days. 😦 Link: http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wordpress-reports/

2 thoughts on “google analytics with wordpress”

First: Welcome to WordPress
Second: Good to know about the plug in.
Third: Does your google analytic only drop on the visitor’s statistics or it was not working at all?

The reason for the question is on account to be one of your readers, which until last night catch up again your webpage. Your blog has been bookmarked in my browser as RSS format. Even that you previously had mentioned the probability of changing the “technology” of your blog, and you finally did, it was without saying good-bye to the previous one. Just because I haven’t seen any alert of any new post from your part for a time, and knowing that your post regularly, I got curious to check what it is going on. And voila! I found you had immigrated to WordPress.

Then, “constant” readers as me, IF they read your blog via the alerts of RSS, they will be coming back slowly, while realizing the change. This may be another reason of the suddenly drop of visitors 😉

Hello; and thanks for the comment. (So, there is at least one person who has found her way here 😉

I was aware that there might have been some issues in the way RSS feed subscriptions work, but since most services link to the Atom feed, and it seemed to be coming from the old URL, I supposed it would work. But obviously there must be a way to inform the most popular RSS readers/services about changes — hope I will have time to look into this at some point.

Regards the plugin: I am not sure it actually works. At least, when I activated it, there was a significant further drop in the Google Analytics figures. Curious.